Carpet with Vases

Detail, Safavid Empire, South Iran, Kerman, 2nd half 17th c.

Permanent Collection Carpets

Artistic intervention: Füsun Onur

The MAK Carpet Collection is one of the most famous in the world. These unique pieces from the 16th and 17th centuries feature
an incomparable variety of patterns and colors, materials, and techniques.

The high degree of cultural exchange between Europe and Asia is vividly exemplified by carpets. Produced in the Middle East
and south-western Asia, carpets were coveted commercial products. They were traded internationally as luxury goods, being
mobile and quite easy to transport. The associated migration of techniques, materials, and motifs illustrates a dialog that
not only involved the lslamic world, but also extended to encompass Europe. A central aim of this presentation is to use the
exhibited carpets to illustrate this reciprocal, intercultural dialog.

This presentation of the MAK's world-famous carpet collection conveys lnsights into the development of carpet-making from
lndia to Europe and from the late 15th to the 18th century. The exhibited carpets are organized according to periods of origin
and places of manufacture, and include items made for noble courts as well as commercial output. Whilethese were imported to Europe from the East for quite some time, the 17th century saw the first European manufactories take
up production. And these new European carpets, though influenced by Eastern models, very soon developed a formal language
of their very own.

The museum has been collecting carpets ever since it was founded. One major purchase was made in 1907, when the present-day
MAK acquired the holdings of the k. k. Österreichisches Handelsmuseum [Imperial Royal Austrian Trade Museum]. But the most
important carpets came to the museum from the former Austrian Imperial House of Habsburg ln 1922. The collection's main focus
lies on classical 16th and 17th-century carpets from the Middle East and south-western Asia, including the territories of
present-day Egypt, Turkey, and Iran.

The spatial concept by Michael Embacher, who took his inspiration from the idea of a silkworm's cocoon, serves as a metaphor
for the mutualnetworks; the carpets themselves are held in place with steel-wire ropes.The artistic intervention by Füsun Onur, who lives and works in lstanbul, tells of the transformations of successive eras,
both in Western and Eastern images, and in the spheres of culture and religion. The artist has created an ephemeral angel
who floats high above the collected objects much like an all-uniting or all-questioning sign.

Reinstallation of the MAK Permanent Collection Carpets, since 9.4.2014

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MAK Collection Online

MAK Collection

Textiles and Carpets Collection

Curator: Silke Geppert

The holdings of the MAKs collection of textiles, which is one of the foremost textile collections in the world, cover
the time from Late Antiquity until today; they encompass the globe with works from nearly all parts of Asia and Europe, and
even South America. The collection is a comprehensive material archive reflecting the artistic, technical, and economic developments
of this special field throughout the last 1,500 years. This richness of the material archive gives it a unique capability
of illustrating the multifaceted, international cultural interconnections that have developed over the centuries.